I have had a long faith journey in my life, and it isn't over yet, and may never be.
I came into this world in 1972, and had the equivalent of a baptism at a Quaker Meeting in Birmingham. I went with my parents for a few years, but they stopped going and that meant I did too. As a pre-teen, I started going again, and also attended some of the excellent Young Quaker and Questabout weekends where we slept on the floor of Midland Meeting Houses and eagerly and seriously explored important topics such as equality. I once staged a demo when the Early Sleepers were disturbed by the older kids watching a film! With signs and everything. An attack of cool in my late teens meant I stopped going. (Just for clarity, I wasn't cool. But I thought I was. And I desperately wanted to be.)
My Mum was going to a C of E church at this time and I went with her for a while. But there were things I couldn't swallow such as the insistence in the creed of one God. Or anything to do with God with a capital G at all really...
Then both my Mum and brother started attending a local Buddhist group. What I remember most about that was the smell of incense and my legs hurting a huge amount when I tried to meditate...
I went off to University thinking that humanism was to be my path, but was so taken up by the drama society and the friends I made that nothing else could get a look in. A role in Jesus Christ Superstar and a course in the History of Christianity made me decide to be a Gnostic. I drew chi-rhos everywhere with my friend Ben. There was some anxiety, there was some wonder. I once lost my bra in an evangelical church (nothing dodgy had gone on, I went there straight from swimming) and was subject to a attempt at conversion when I went to pick it up.
Over the years I moved to and from Buddhism, including a spell of six months living and working in a Tibetan Buddhist monastery in exile in South India. Once, Buddhism saved my life (thank you for ever Pema Chodron).
I returned to the Quakers about ten years ago and now maintain a dual spiritual heritage, regularly going to my local meeting house and to my local Buddhist group, and getting a great deal from both. A month ago today, my brother and I, and other friends and family, crafted a Buddhist funeral for my Mum with Quaker elements.
Two weeks ago, I heard a snapshot of a sermon from an Irish minister on the radio, saying that it is in the interruptions to our lives, in the things that we didn't want, that we can find the Kingdom of God. I take this to mean, to me, that that is where we can find compassion, love and forgiveness, and true faith, that is without borders, labels and words.
From the beginning, my life was full of interruptions. I was born with a mild developmental condition, my mother had a serious illness/progressive disability, I wrestled with anxiety and depression from my teenage years, and as an adult faced infertility, relationship breakdown, not being able to adopt, the death of both my parents and redundancy. The challenges are not over.
So my heartfelt prayer is to be able to continue to find the Kingdom of God, the love, compassion and forgiveness, in these challenges, woven into them, there because of them, integral to them. May I grow in love and compassion, serve others, and be kind, recognising our vulnerability, suffering and innate goodness. May I feel and know the love of others. May I become friends with all of myself, loving and accepting myself and others, just as we are.
May I grow.
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